Renoir and the foolishness of chronological snobbery

The Spectator ^ | 27 Aug 2019 | Roger Kimball

[Rummyfan]

Peter Schjeldahl’s essay ‘Renoir’s Problem Nudes‘ in The New Yorker has already attracted some portion of the contempt and ridicule it deserves. Here is my modest contribution to that task.

According to Schjeldahl, Renoir ‘sparks a sense of crisis.’ ‘Who doesn’t have a problem with Pierre-Auguste Renoir?’ he asks in his opening gambit. Can we have a show of hands on that? Pace Schjeldahl, Renoir is such an immensely popular because his painting is essentially celebratory; he looked upon the world with an oeil bienveillant, glorying in its sumptuousness. There is great intensity in some of Renoir’s portraits, but very little melancholy. The dominant mood is festive: a happy, sociable sensuousness.

You would not know this from Schjeldahl’s account. Renoir’s reputation, he asserts, ‘has fallen on difficult days.’ This is partly because of ‘class’ issues: Renoir, son of a tailor and a seamstress, ‘was bourgeois by aspiration’ rather than origin. Imagine: he actually celebrated prosperity.

Bad though that is for the virtue-signaling mandarins who read The New Yorker, much worse was his unenlightened attitude towards women. Renoir liked them, you see, but not in the way that people like Peter Schjeldahl can countenance. ‘In contemporary discourse,’ Schjeldahl observes, Renoir has ‘come to stand for “sexist male artist.”’ Uh oh.

[Rummyfan]

While I am partial to Seurat myself, I like Renoir too....

An art review in an increasingly irrelevant bulletin of sclerotic orthodoxy may seem beside the point. In substance, it is. But considered as a symptom, a bellwether, it another grim reminder of cultural disintegration and therefore worth all of the obloquy we can muster.

Tom Wolfe called out The New Yorker as schlerotic and anachronistic and dead fifty years ago. But it's still publishing. I confess I used to read it occasionally, mainly for the movie reviews and Roger Angell's writing on baseball.

[Verginius Rufus]

As to art, de gustibus non est disputandum.

The New Yorker used to have funny cartoons at least. In recent years whenever I have looked at an issue the cartoons were generally pretty lame.

[ml/nj]

Couple of my favorites:

ML/NJ

[Rummyfan]

Beautiful.

[Richard Axtell]

This issue has always been a great “peeve” for me, the silliness and irrelevancy of judging the past or cultural legacies, by the standards of today. The past is set, it cannot be changed, it is what it is. Renoir was a wonderful painter: personal, sensual, human. The author is a stick in the mud at best, a cultural ogre and philistine would be a better appraisal. What he says, says nothing about Renoir, and everything about the author’s emotional and personal atrophy.

What it also says is that he is part of a movement that wishes to purge our culture of its heritage, of all the accomplishments and genius that individual artists have given us. We have seen this over and over again: The “Salon des Refusés”, Hitler’s banning of “degenerate” art, Stalin’s strictures against anything but “socialist realism”. Peter Schjeldahl succeeds in becoming the old frustrated crone, that bans books, and destroys paintings. How “Victorian” in the worst sense.

This is a fool’s errand, an irrelevancy. Will he welcome judgement of his writing and ideas by critics of the future? He cares not, as his ideas are juvenile, dictatorial, and meant only to limit access to and paint over the beauty of the past.

[Bob434]

love renoir paintings- i just loved how he interpreted light in an impressionistic manner- I do photography now, and am always looking for that special soft mottled light-

[combat_boots]

The blues Renoir used really can’t be captured digitally. Not well anyway. The one with the mother and little girl (standing in front of the mother) at a Paris café take your breath away.

[dp0622]

I didn’t understand 5 of the words in the article and your post :)

I’ll be back after doing some googling :)

[dfwgator]

That painting is just begging for a Biden Photoshop.

[Bob434]

[Bob434]

lol- yup

[Boogieman]

Those who can’t paint, become art critics.

[MarvinStinson]

Mentally ill phony Peter Schjeldahl.

[MarvinStinson]

“I have a fairly high degree of confidence in my judgment, in that I don’t doubt my sanity; or, even if I do, I don’t have to be reassured.”

Peter Schjeldahl

[MarvinStinson]

“Matisse can make you hate your life for its comparatively insipid joys.”

Peter Schjeldahl

[Romulus]

I am not a Renoir fan. Sorry.

[MarvinStinson]

“With art criticism it’s difficult to discuss beauty, to assess it, because there’s always the possibility that we’re insane.”

Peter Schjeldahl

[MarvinStinson]

“There is no such thing as a beautiful object or a beautiful woman.”

Peter Schjeldahl

[Rummyfan]

He looks like a Picasso....